18. Further Justification
After dealing with “smell and smoke” the next comment I sought to justify was “As far as we’re concerned, it’s a second-rate activity sitting in a second rate regulatory system.” I used the prefix “As far as we’re concerned” because I recognised that there was no objective procedure for giving an incinerator a quality rating and not because I wanted the excuse that it was a subjective opinion only. In the context of the broadcast, the “our” referred to both the campaigners and the local public.The “second rate” for both the activities at the plant and the regulatory system wasn’t a flippant categorisation. Firstly, it related to a plant that was atrocious from an experiential standpoint and described a system that, amongst other failings, allowed the importation of toxic waste when even the burning of our own waste could be problematic. Secondly it was a deeper judgement made by well-informed campaigners and local residents alike, about the technology employed at the plant and the controls that were absent in the process and in the business.
Although the national regulatory bodies were bound to contradict the thrust of my BBC broadcast, my comments weren’t entirely without institutional empathy. I was in good company with the young but powerless Hazardous Waste Inspectorate, which had just come of age under David Mills. Its first report in 1985 illuminated serious deficiencies in the control of hazardous waste activities. Then, having opened a can of worms and undeterred by criticisms for being alarmist, the HWI entitled the following year’s report “Hazardous Waste Management: Ramshackle and Antediluvian?” That report was produced despite a staffing crisis and its title echoed the terms of Professor Sir Richard Southwood, Chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in a 1985 article for “The New Scientist”.The HWI’s next report, for 1986, said:
. . . the Inspectorate is concerned to discover that in Wales, the Waste Disposal Authority for the ReChem incineration and Chemical treatment plants in Pontypool has only visited the plant six times during the reporting year. These visits were in response either to complaints from the public or to other specific stimuli rather than on the initiative of the WDA. The HWI considers this to be a remarkably casual approach by the WDA in response to its duties of monitoring and controlling a major hazardous waste disposal facility.
The “Waste Disposal Authority” getting it in the neck from the Hazardous Waste Inspectorate was none other than the hamstrung Torfaen Borough Council.As time went by and the Council tackled the legal obstacles to its intervention, the criticism was shown to be somewhat misdirected, but at least the HWI saw that something was wrong.More welcome criticisms, and perhaps in recognition of the pressure from campaigners, were those made when the Hazardous Waste Inspectorate paid attention to PCBs, waste importation, incineration and the Pontypool plant in particular.It noted the need for improvements to stack gas emissions and incinerator loading.Its lack of executive responsibilities may have allowed the HWI to use plain language punctuated by detailed examples, when portraying an ugly image of hazardous waste in a system which thrived on confusion.
When I made my presumptive assessment of the situation, back in 1984, after comparing my own commercial and industrial experience with the waste business, I decided that people with waste to dispose of had few commercial incentives for maintaining high standards. I found the essence of my view mirrored by that HWI 1986 report with “Ramshackled” in its title. The HWI also reiterated its previous warning about pitfalls in the free market for waste, concurring with me in saying: “that the national waste disposal policy is vulnerable to purely commercial decisions.” The report gave the figures for the recent surge in imports of waste to the UK and also illustrated the free-market foolhardiness of the trend towards cheap incineration at sea. Unlike ocean incineration, one thing in favour of Rechem’s location in the community was that its problems couldn’t go unnoticed. Prophetically, and perhaps motivated by the publicity surrounding ReChem, the HWI had also promoted the development of sophisticated analytical techniques as a prelude to mapping dioxin contamination across the UK. In October 1985 the University of East Anglia was sub-contracted to do that analysis and the UEA gained valuable experience in the field of work that was so important for me.
The HWI report also noted December 1985’s eleventh report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Amongst that body’s recommendations were reinforcements to the Control of Pollution Act, plus the granting of powers of enforcement to Waste Disposal Authorities and the return of the Air Pollution Inspectorate to the Department of the Environment as the nucleus of a unified Pollution Inspectorate. It was proposed that a more powerful Hazardous Waste Inspectorate would be part of the unified structure. The Royal Commission clearly appreciated the need to have the structures, regulations, organisations and powers needed to catch up with errant activities in the waste trade. Whilst the 1986 HWI report gave me some substance for the defence of my comments on regulation, I could only imagine that Rechem’s lawyers didn’t want to assume that Rechem was implicated in its catchy title, “Ramshackle and Antediluvian?”
Even if the principle of burning hazardous waste was an acceptable one, even if the regulations and procedures for process monitoring and environmental analysis were adequate and even if the incinerator hadn’t been placed in a valley with downdraughts and temperature inversion, I knew there were better ways of doing the job. For one thing, rotary kiln technology provided greater potential for combustion control than ReChem’s static open-hearth furnace. I also knew that there were better processes for cleaning particulates from emissions and that there were ways of minimising dioxin formation. Incinerator technology aside, the waste storage and preparation facilities at the Pontypool plant also left a lot to be desired.It was obvious that the degree of exposure of those parts of the process could produce emissions at ground level and contribute towards the characteristic ReChem smell. This could be confirmed whenever the incinerator was shut down for maintenance and the smell persisted. It was also obvious to me that the storage facilities presented a different type of risk, where the mixture of so many hazardous substances in such close proximity as appeared absurd. Added to that it was in the nature of the business that hazardous packages wouldn’t always have the correct identity, that the transportation of waste was poorly policed and that the in-transit storage of dangerous chemicals in our lay-bys and side roads near homes couldn’t have been part of a plan.
In saying “second-rate regulatory system” on the radio, I made sure that the connection the authorities had with Rechem’s failings was clear.I would even take the emphasis off Rechem on occasions, by saying that the shortcomings of the Pontypool plant were simply the product of poor regulation. Therefore, on The World Tonight I wanted Canada to know that I was not just speaking of an incineration plant, but of a system which had a reverse rationale for receiving the waste. I wanted Canadians to reject the idea that Pontypool was a perfect solution and I aimed to destroy the myth promulgated by our government that when the waste left Canada it would have no further impact on anyone. Although I could have relied on the “As far as we’re concerned” of my comment as an insurance policy in my defence, in honestly assessing how I wanted the comment to be taken I soon shed any inclination to fall back on subjectivity. I really did want to go all the way and prove to the High Court that the shortcomings at the plant and in the business in general would rightly confer a “second rate” status on the whole business.
Considering the obstacles facing me, proving what I wanted to prove would be an immense task and in doing so it would even have to challenge the essence of ReChem’s long-running scientific authority.On The World Tonight I naturally made no mention of ReChem producing contamination because the local authority’s findings were not believed. However, I had a secret about site contamination that was enough to give me faith that the derided local authority test results would eventually have their day. Therefore, when compiling the defence to justify my Radio 4 comments I was aiming it towards a time in the future when the words contamination and ReChem might be legitimately linked. I just hoped I could hang on long enough for that time to arrive. After tackling “second rate” I felt the third key comment to defend was
But if in any way those containers get offloaded and set on the road to ReChem at Pontypool, we’re going to make sure they don’t get through those gates without a good fight.
Yes, we had stopped incoming waste vehicles at ReChem in the past, but only to question drivers. This time I was quite sure there would be a physical blockade of the Canadian waste at the gates of the plant, if the waste got that far, and it was important for the Canadian ask themselves how they would react if the people of Pontypool put their bodies on the line. In my hinting at that possibility, the contentious words for ReChem must have been “put up a good fight” and, despite the era being a difficult one for demonstrations, I was mindful of the possibility of passive resistance. However, with our campaigning group’s amiable reputation, if ReChem really thought I meant anything more sinister by saying “put up a good fight, I would find it easy to argue that anyone who saw a violent side in us was purely paranoid.
Finally, with what must have been an unusual approach to a writ, and to underline the popular agreement with what I said on the radio, I wanted to step outside the legal conventions. To demonstrate that I was representing the views of many other people, I typed out my “smell and smoke”, “second rate” and a “good fight” comments and placed each comment at the top of separate A4 pages. At an overfull public meeting in New Inn’s village hall I read the comments from the stage and asked people to shout their agreement. The rousing response to each comment made me feel that the audience wanted the sound of their support to reach ReChem down the road. I then went around the hall asking people to sign in agreement with those comments, which they did so with smiles on their faces. I quickly collected 300 signatures and stopped at that. I didn’t know what legal significance this unconventional idea would have, but at least it didn’t result in another 300 writs and it was a massive boost for me.